Cellular Jewellery - Part 2

Initially, my cellular jewellery was based on oval dome-shaped pieces, but it wasn't quite what I envisaged - at least, I could see other possibilities as I had with my nebula jewellery i.e. that it could be much more 3D in some way.

I had never heard of alcohol ink until I came across the Alcohol Ink Art Community group on Facebook and came across some cell art by Christina VanGinkel. The pieces involved painting sheets of Yupo paper with alcohol inks and then holes are made in the paper with a wood burning tool or stencil iron.  Finally, the cell layers are separated one on top of another with adhesive tabs to keep the sheets apart and provide the 3D depth before being framed - at least, as I understand it. 

Yupo is a synthetic, non-porous paper made from 100% polypropylene. In effect, it is a plastic paper. It is acid free and ph neutral and is perfect for painting with alcohol inks due to their unique properties as paints.

I found Christina's pieces so interesting and, to my eyes, beautiful - although she does not primarily produce art in this style. For her other work, please have a look at her website - Christina VanGinkel Art.

I just love art that is interesting - which, for me, usually means that there is a lot going on in the piece. Yes, I know. We're all different. I have just always loved detail in art and love pieces that you can look at again and again and find something new. I have found that with the cell art I have seen.

These are the pieces that inspired me and the move away from the barely three dimensional pieces I had made so far ...

Christina's pieces inspired me to research further and I came across other pieces by other artists.

The work of the Californian based fine artist, Jess Kirkman especially struck me. Her cell art was the kind of thing I envisaged doing in polymer clay. This is the kind of style I was looking for. Here are some of Jess's wonderful pieces ...

It isn't hard to see that the layers and negative space and colours all combine to produce works of art that are intricate, fascinating and beautiful. Could you really ever bore of looking at any of them? You can find much more of Jess's work on her website https://manifestjess.com/ or at her Instagram https://www.instagram.com/manifest.jess/ or Pinterest https://www.pinterest.co.uk/manifestjess/inked-in/ accounts.

When trying to make jewellery even approaching this style, I encountered several problems

Firstly, being jewellery, it has a tendency to be worn which, in turn means that it has to be more robust than a piece of wall art. Polymer clay can be pretty robust, but it has limits - especially if you want the piece to be lightweight and thin, whilst being unsupported at points. Various clays have various strengths, but even so, thin sheets consisting mainly of holes poses a real challenge.

Secondly, is the problem of how to separate the layers so that they hold together and yet provide the required depth and also support and strengthen the layers.

Thirdly, the problem of size. I think the artwork I had seen was roughly A5 size, but even a large pendant would be only 3" (7.5cm) long and 2" (5cm) wide. This is a problem because each sheet needs to be sculpted before being baked and the holes need to be punched and manipulated, which means that it is difficult to not distort the edges. The large holes are quite straightforward, but it is the very small holes which cause most problems - especially on narrow pieces of clay separating two larger holes as these narrow areas of clay can be easily snapped even when the clay isn't cured

Fourthly, to paint with alcohol ink before or after baking. Using the ink before baking results in a darker colour unless the ink is very dilute. Unlike Yupo paper, un-baked polymer clay absorbs ink and if it is applied too dark, it is difficult to lighten the colour. I found that the answer was to add very dilute colours before baking and then to build up darker colours after baking and assembling the whole piece would mean several bakings were necessary.

Strangely, my very first attempt was the only one which turned out as I wanted, but because of the problems outlined above, the clay sheets were thicker than I really wanted. I was happy with the colouring and the overall effect, but the size and the need for it to be strong enough to wear without snapping meant that what can be achieved is necessarily limited and it would be impossible to make a piece with the hundreds of tiny holes found in the Yupo wall art pieces.

Here, then, is my first set of layered cell jewellery although I am considering completely re-making the earrings so they are longer and narrower (bottom photo of these five).

Another decision I had to make was whether to edge the pendant and earrings to neaten them or to leave them as they were. In the end, I decided to leave the edges rough as i felt it suited the organic look more .

Sadly, I didn't keep a photographic record of how this set progressed to show some of the stages involved, but I did make a photographic of the next set I made - my rendition of a coral reef and was soon on its way to its new home in the U.S.A.

 

I have made other pendants and sets, but my first remains my personal favourite.

One final cell piece I would like to include here is another layered cell pendant. This one was smaller than the previous two and includes microbeads. I decided to put a frame round this piece and seal the layers in, but am pleased with the colouring and the sense of depth I want to achieve, while still being a more 'normal' size for a pendant - whatever normal means.

I doubt very much that I have made my last piece of cell jewellery and, in fact, writing this blog post has inspired me to make another set and to try this time to get the layers of clay thinner. Wish me luck.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/AlanCordiner

Cellular Jewellery - Part 1

You may have gathered that I love jewellery with 3D elements and my mind is swimming with various ideas at times - particularly when I see 3D effects and wonder if something similar can be done in polymer clay.

Holes showing layers below has been in my thoughts for a couple of years and I had toyed with the idea and made what I thought were some nice pendants.  The first I did to cover a black cabochon and I still love the purple, green and beige tones.

 

Another was the Lava Pendant.  I wanted to create the feel of  bubbling lava - volcano style!  As with the previous pendant, the red, orange, and black colours were achieved using alcohol inks on a light coloured clay, while the yellow background is bright yellow clay painted with a very vibrant alcohol ink - Pinata Sunbright Yellow to be precise.  I must get some more of this ink.  It is more intense than the Ranger Adirondack Sunlight Yellow equivalent.  The downside of the Pinata is that it scorches more easily - especially if a piece requires several bakings or needs to be baked for a long time.

 

The next one, I called Leviathan Spit.  Leviathan was a great Sea Monster mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible.  I always have this image of the monster rising through the surface from the deep, with water and foam running from its mouth - hence Leviathan Spit.   The base is light blue and the lighter colours are white and ivory clay.  Looks simple enough, but the white and ivory clay was rolled as thin as I could get it and then holes punched in to it and other small details added.

A colour combination I have loved for a long time is light blue and light pink.  The next pendant was pretty straight forward compared to the others.  Just a simple cellular pendant, but I liked it - and so did someone else, thankfully.

Polymer clay is extremely versatile, but it has limitations too - especially when used in making jewellery.  I'll look at some of these problems in part two of my Cellular Jewellery when a photo led to me experimenting with more layers and more three dimensional creations.

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A couple of the pieces above are still available in my Etsy shop ...

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/AlanCordiner

Nebula and Galaxy Jewellery - Part 2

My nebula pendants began as simple black domes as described in my last article.  I felt that they represented nebulae the best I could imagine at the time - and I still think some of these simpler pendants do best represent the photos I have seen, sent back from Hubble and other space telescopes.

One pendant I created was based on a panoramic view of the infra red sky showing all the galaxies outside of the Milky Way.  This really wasn't one for carefully placing a few micro beads as the image was full of stars and galaxies and nebulae.  Again, it was a dome of black clay with a white streak of clay and Adirondack Ice Cap alcohol ink and many micro beads and was quite startling to look at.

I also did a smaller pendant around the same time called 'Black Hole' because it was my representation of what I imagined a black hole to be like - except I suppose it should really swallow up the pendant if it was anything like realistic.

Another one which was a bit more 3d than just a dome was one I called 'Starburst' as it was how I imagined a star to come to birth - emerging from the dark, gaseous mass of a nebula - again very far from reality, I have no doubt.

A final one which was just a bit more 3D was a photo I saw called 'The Gates of Heaven'.  They were apparently huge pillars of gas in the cosmos.  After some research, it would seem that the photo I saw is a fake using some clever graphics, but the idea inspired me and so I did my own take on 'The Gates of Heaven'.

I did two pendants loosely based on actual nebulae.  The first was the 'Crab Nebula'.  I knew this was going to be a tough one to do and for once I wasn't wrong.  It is a spectacular nebula, but extremely difficult to even approximate in polymer clay - despite using translucent clay and liquid clay to try and capture the ethereal quality of the centre of the nebula.

The second based on a real nebula was the 'Tarantula Nebula' pendant.  With this one, I was more interested in trying to capture the beautiful colours.

A follower from Australia challenged me to try and do something representing eternity.  Now eternity is such a mind-blowing concept that it is hard enough to get your head around, let alone to even begin to represent it in some form of art jewellery.  I decided I would do a set, but rather than being domed, it would be concave and I would try and represent stars and nebulae being sucked, whirlpool-like, into total blackness.  I did the pendant by making an open-fronted hollow cabochon and inside were two circles of clay as I wanted stars to show at different levels within the piece.  On the whole I was very happy with the pendant, if not quite as satisfied with the accompanying earrings, but then it is very rare that I am fully satisfied with anything I do.  Such is the burden of being a perfectionist when one is anything but perfect.

The next nebula piece I made which was also more three dimensional I called the 'Warp Nebula'.  My vision was to attempt the cloud like nature of nebulae, but with a large star appearing to be floating in the middle of the said nebula.  The pendant was pretty tricky to make and, as it turns out, even more tricky to photograph in order to show the curving depth of the piece - and to prevent it from looking reminiscent of a cat's face - which it was reminiscent of when photographed from certain angles, but looked nothing like in reality.

It had been almost a year since I have made a nebula pendant or set before I revisited them again The subject, this kind of jewellery and the technique just fascinate me.  There is so much potential with this jewellery - not only with colours and patterns, but with the 3D possibilities and I love that aspect.

Most of my recent ones have returned to the simple dome approach, but this time with holes or grooves sculpted into the domes or with protruding clay to give the illusion of stars shooting out of the piece.  This was the first ...

I created another called 'Birth of a Star' - imagining a new star to be glowing red and emerging from a gaseous mass.  The main star is set back in the pendant and can only be seen from certain angles and I decided to surround it with smaller red stars on the surface or on stalks of clay, as if they had broken away from the emerging star.

The 'Vortex' pendant was another domed one, but with swirling grooves sculpted into it to represent stars being sucked into a deep hole to perhaps form the two larger stars inside.  The base clay is Sculpey Premo Accents 'Twinkle Twinkle' - the basis of most of my nebula creations.  But as well as the microbeads to represent stars, this pendant also has tiny amounts of  fin, coloured glitter so that the pendant sparkles when caught by the light.  I love the idea of hidden stars, which are revealed when looked at from certain angles.

The final piece in this post is one I called 'A Universe within a Universe'.  I think the name speaks for itself.  This was a return to a more concave pendant of the type of the 'Warp Nebula' above.  

The nebulae and galaxies photographed by the Hubble telescope and other space telescopes are not actually brightly coloured - or are they?  The point is that the photos returned to earth are monochrome and scientists give them the colours so that the eye can see what is actually there.  Sometimes these colours are linked to the actual chemical elements and compounds found in the nebula or galaxy photographed.  Invariably though, the photos we see are sometimes more filled with the colour of space (the stars and gasses), than the blackness of space - and the colours are often vibrant and startling.  This pendant utilises the beautiful Sculpey Premo Accents Purple Pearl quite heavily on the interior of the piece - maybe partly because purple and it variants are my favourite colours!  It is just such a beautiful and vibrant colour and I was pleased with the effect and the overall result - and thankfully, someone else fell in love with it too.

There is no doubt that I will return to nebula jewellery time and again.  Our universe inspires and amazes me and the photos from Hubble and elsewhere are simply mind-blowing.  I don't pretend that my creations can emulate the beauty of this part of creation or the wonderful photographs taken of it, but my hope is that at least some capture the colourfulness and the sense of ethereal gassiness of the cosmos.  Besides, sometimes I get an overwhelming and irresistible 'nebula moment' and just have to get it out of my system.

My Nebula Pieces on Etsy

https://www.alancordiner.com

Nebula and Galaxy Jewellery - Part 1

"When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honour." (Psalm 8:3-5)

I'm constantly amazed by the photos being sent back to earth by the Hubble space telescope.   Of course, the colours we see in these amazing photos of galaxies and nebulae aren't how they would appear if we were up close and seeing them with our own eyes.  The camera is often detecting radiation and this data, when sent back to earth is then interpreted and the various elements are colourised to show what might be out there.  They are representations often of gases and radiations which would be invisible to the naked eye.  Nor can the photos do justice to the immense size of these nebulae and galaxies which are mindbogglingly huge! 

My inspiration to make nebula jewellery came from a life-long fascination I have had with space ever since my grandmother bought me a poster of the Solar System when I was a child and which hung on the wall at the foot of my bed for some years.  I wish I still had it, but it's sadly long gone.  Of course, even attempting to create polymer clay jewellery which could do justice to the Hubble photographs, let alone the universe itself, is to be onto a hiding to nothing.  However, my love of space and my love of making 3D polymer clay jewellery meant that I had to give it a go and there are so many colours and patterns and such a sense of eerie depth in these photos that the possibilities are endless - or at least as far as your imagination and the limitations of polymer clay will allow you to  explore.

I was finally galvanised into doing something about it after a trip to the dentist.  There, I had picked up a copy of the National Geographic magazine, which had an article in it of the latest Hubble photos.  The photo which caught my attention was small, but particularly ethereal and although I couldn't return home with the magazine, I studied the photo and got a general feel for it.  It should be noted that very few of my nebula pieces are attempts to recreate the Hubble photographs.  A general shape or colour combination is the inspiration and I just go with the gaseous flow!  In any case, attempting to recreate a nebula in an inch or two of polymer clay is futile, if not downright arrogant in thinking that I or anyone else could even come close to portraying such awesome glories.   So in my jewellery, I attempt to capture the beauty, depth and ethereal quality of these wonderful parts of our wonderful universe.  That is a hard enough task as it is and some pieces, I feel, are more successful than others, but all are a joy to create - even if I only create in a secondary sense a mere shadow and an almost laughable representation of what The Lord created out of his mind.  God has the monopoly on the creation of glorious things - and talk about thinking big!

This was the first one I did after that dentist's visit - the first visit of many!  Like many of my nebula pieces, it is set in a 1" diameter bezel and it still remains one of my favourites to date - perhaps partly because it was the very first ...

Quite a few others have followed since all based loosely on the images returned from Hubble and other telescopes.  I know they look like a piece of cake to make - and in one sense they are - but they are actually quite time consuming and difficult to get to look right.  Most of the ones I have made are based on a dome of black Sculpey Premo Accents Twinkle Twinkle clay although sometimes I just use black clay with different coloured fine glitters worked into the clay.  One or two sizes of micro bead are added to represent the larger stars and bursts of colour often seen in the photos and the wispy, gaseous elements are attempted with very thin layers and smears of different clays with more micro beads added.  However, I decided that it wasn't just a case of throwing micro beads at the clay and the more the merrier.  It's amazing how just one tiny bead in the wrong place can make the piece look wrong - at least to me and so I assume to others too.  Contrary to what I am sure must be public opinion, I don't just slap the beads on.  Rather, each colour and each micro bead is chosen for its place in the piece and placed carefully.  And the 'stars' have to be visible to varying degrees, so it has to be decided in advance which beads need to be partially buried in the black clay before the first baking as these pieces may be baked three or four times before they are finished.  

I was asked by someone if I could make a purple nebula pendant for them to give as a gift to a friend.  I came up with a couple for them to choose from, but I especially liked this one as a very thin layer of translucent clay does actually give the illusion of gas ...

Each of these small pendants takes me 2-3 hours to make, but I love making each one and it is an especially pleasant and relaxing way to work with polymer clay.

Some of the others I have made can be seen below.  I assure you that quite unintentionally, but with sleight of thumb I have managed to create things which I hadn't noticed until after completion and often pointed out by others in the patterns and colours of the pieces.  In the ones below, you may be able to spot a red fox (the third pendant down in the next group), and Woodstock, the bird from Charles M. Schulz's comic strip, Peanuts (The bottom one in this next group).  While in another piece alone, I saw a goose, while someone else saw a sea monster rising through the foam from the deep and yet another saw a black poodle - all in the same piece (the fourth one down in the next group).  Can you spot them?  You may have to turn your screen to see the goose and sea monster. None of these were intended, but such is the way of clay!

Two of my favourites were a broach (pin) which I made.  I especially loved the bezel and the colours in this one ...

And the final one for this article was one of my very favourites.  It was made slightly differently in that some of the colour is polymer clay and some is alcohol ink on translucent clay.

Some of these have been sold, but some are still available in the 'Space and Science' section of my Etsy shop ...

Space Pendants and Sets

https://www.alancordiner.com

Bag End, Hobbiton

Making mainly jewellery, when thinking of something to make a male friend, it is quite a poser.  Few men wear any jewellery and if they do, then its mainly a small cross or a ring or a small earring etc.  But if they aren't really into jewellery, then what I do is largely useless.

Anyway, this year I had a friend who was going to attain one of those '0' birthdays.  We thought and thought about what we could get him and searched the shops, but to no avail.  Men, I find, are notoriously difficult to buy for unless they have a very obvious hobby or interest.  I'm sure you get where I'm coming from here.

Anyway, we knew our friend is a big Tolkien fan and so, stupidly, I decided to have a go at making a small sculpture of Bag End from Lord of the Rings. As it wasn't being sold, copyright issues weren't a problem.  I decided to make it so that it could be used as a mobile phone stand or a letter rack.

The first thing to do was make a basic shell onto which I could add the detail.  I think the final sculpture ended up being about 7" long and about 3.5" high with a slot in the back.

In the photo above, you can see the shell and beginning to add the greenery on the roof.  I didn't want to use inks or paints at all if possible.  So for the green, I used two different shades - a light green and a clearly darker green and mixed them together so that they were marbled, yet still distinct colours.  I find this light and shade makes this kind of greenery look more realistic.  Into the wall was sandwiched two brass rods to add strength.  Clay later on would fix the wall solidly to the base.

The greenery - representing grass and shrubs - was textured using the tip point of a needle tool.  I tend to do it in a circular and plucking motion as you want it to look as fluid and irregular as possible.  Just having lots of tiny holes poked into the clay doesn't cut the mustard and looks unrealistic.

Gradually, the grass, shrubs and flowers were built up.  Whether doing this or jewellery with delicate leaves and flowers, I do a small section and then bake for a short time - perhaps 10 - 15 minutes.  Then cool and add a bit more and bake again.  The shell was baked for over an hour initially and then there was perhaps a further dozen short bakings.  I bake often because it is too easy to squish the raw clay while working on another part so baking preserves what you have already done.

You can see here the parts of the house being built up - the greenery and flowers, wood and the brick surrounds of the door and windows ...

The flowers are just tiny balls of clay indented in the centre using a needle tool.  You can also see the shading in the greenery caused by the mixture of two different greens.  And so the foliage is gradually built up.

The door, steps and path came next and moss and weeds added to the cracks in the steps and path.

 
The windows were the bit i was least pleased with.  The time I had to complete it didn't allow me to experiment.  I would have loved to print out the windows on acetate, but in the end the best I could manage was glass cabochons painted on with gold acrylic paint.  Not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but passable.

The remainder of the front of the house was small details ... a garden bench, a flower trug, flowerpots, a pumpkin, chimney pots and a light over the door.  I wanted it to look like Bilbo Baggins was around and picking flowers, but had been called away for some reason.

The final stage was to add a backing to the front of the house and then another piece at the very back to form a slot for a phone or letters.  the base and inside of the slot were then covered with bottle green felt.

It was a lot of work, especially as I am a very slow worker, but every minute was an absolute pleasure to work on and, apart from the windows, it ended up pretty much as I had envisaged it and was very happy with the result.  Photos have a habit of magnifying things, but in reality the finished house looks smaller and more delicate than in the pictures.

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The bench, trug or flowers, plant pots and pumpkin ...

The finished sculpture of  Bag End, Hobbiton ...